2. NO HUMAN BONE, vertebral or not, can stop a 30.06 round
3. NO HUMAN BONE can change the vector of a 30.06 round by 90 degrees
It all depends on the construction of the bullet and what the velocity was when it impacted the body. There are lots of .30-06 caliber hunting bullets which can be fragmented when they hit human vertebrae. We do not know the construction of the bullet that hit Charlie. There are hundreds of different possibilities. That is a simple fact.
The 90 degree assertion is not known. We do not know the bullet hit the vertibrae at 90 degrees. It could easily have hit from a much shallower angle. Bullet paths when they hit flesh, are not always exactly straight.
Charlie was a big man.
If you talk to hunters who have shot lots of game animals, some much smaller than Charlie was, you will find bullets often do strange things when they hit bone.
Here is a discussion of hunting bullet types, which includes a discussion of the common “Cup-and core” hunting bullet, explaining how they can “explode” when they hit bone.
https://www.themeateater.com/hunt/big-game/ask-meateater-what-big-game-bullet-should-i-choose
My 90 degrees comment was based on my understanding that the bullet took an approximately 90 degree turn after hitting Charlie.
If it came from the front, and then went down into his body, that’s about a 90 degree change in trajectory.
It could be there’s something I’m missing.
Also: if the bullet was in fact fired from a 30.06, from the front, at a distance of less than 150 yards, the probability that it would enter the neck, then hit a large bone and stay in Charlie’s body is very small. You can say it could happen, and you are right. But all extremely rare events are, technically, possibilities.
My conclusion is that the reported behavior of the bullet is just another strange and unusual event. There are multiple unusual or unexpected events surrounding this case. Statistical analysis can be applied to determine likelihood of something being real vs fabricated. The proper method to apply statistics in a case like this is to estimate the probability of each event being true (such as the bullet trajectory, the explanations given for the behaviors of people on the scene and following the shooting, the explanations given for the post facto statements of involved individuals, etc.) and then to multiply all the individual probabilities with each other.
I believe there is a low chance that funny business was not involved in this case.
Again, there was no mention of the camera above and behind Charlie as a device that fired a .22 long rifle bullet.